It was a bad day...

Yesterday I had a bad morning. It was one of those times where I desperately wanted to be back in the states. Back where I know the rules and the language. Back where I can talk to anyone on the street if needed. Back to where I feel at home, even if I've never been to a particular area because it's still my country and we speak the same language.

I've been needing to set an appointment with my kidney doctor for the last couple of years. After the issues I had with my kidney during pregnancy, he wanted me to come back for a more in depth scan of my kindeys. It had to be after Elly weaned because they'll use some sort of dye in my system to see the kidneys better. Obviously, I've been putting this off for awhile because Elly's been weaned for quite some time and I'm just getting around to it.

 So, I finally asked Sam to set an appointment for me a couple of weeks ago. I usually try to get him to go with me, but this time he had meetings that he couldn't get out of. I wasn't too concerned because I'd been to this doctor before and figured it wasn't anything I couldn't handle. Obviously, it wasn't. Obviously, I need my husband even more than I thought.

This doctor moved his practice to another location since the last time I had an appointment with him, but I figured I'd just put the address in Tom-Tom and there would be no problem. We left the house by 11:00 since the appointment was at 11:30 and it was only 15-20 minutes away.

I got to the general area and saw a parking garage and figured that would be easier than finding street parking. I parked and we went up to the street level to find the office. We walked one way then another then back again and I could not find the street that his office was located on. Then I decided to just keep walking in one direction and eventually did come to the street name I was looking for, but could not find his building number. By this time it was already 11:45. I eventually did find the building number and it had his name on the door, so I was relieved even though I was late.

My relief was short lived, however, because after walking up 3 flights of stairs, I realized I wasn't finding his office. The building was under construction and full of construction workers. I felt like I was walking through a construction site. It didn't seem to me like there were any offices in this building. I went up and down a couple of times and by that time was so frustrated I decided I was not going to make the appointment. I started walking back to the parking garage so frustrated that I was in tears. Elly was so precious! She said "Mama, are you crying? Mama, are you sad?" and I told her it was alright. I told her I was not upset with her, but I was just frustrated and she said "Mama, I love you." What a sweet little girl I have!

Anyhow, we got back to the parking garage and I could not find the kiosk to pay at. Over here, you get the ticket on the way into the garage and have to put the ticket into the kiosk and pay for it before you can get back out of the garage. I couldn't find the kiosk a.n.y.w.h.e.r.e. I went up and down the levels of the garage with no luck. I eventually went into a bank attached to the garage and asked one of the ladies "Sprechen Sie Englisch?". She said "No". I held up the parking garage ticket and asked where I pay. I guess she had pity on my because she said "Come with me" (really? you don't speak English?) took me outside and pointed to some stairs and told me the kiosk was at the bottom.

I paid for my ticket, but then realized I was in a totally different area of the garage and didn't know how to get back to my car so I had to go back up the stairs and walk all the way back to where I knew how to find my car. We made it back to the car and I hurriedly got Elly buckled in because I didn't know how long I had before I would owe more on the ticket. When I got to the exit gate, the ticket would not work. I went back to the kiosk to see if it was because I owed more money. I didn't. This happened a couple more times before I called Sam in tears telling him I couldn't get out of the garage. I was incredibly frustrated!! He wanted to know where I was and I couldn't even tell him. I'd just followed Tom-Tom, so didn't know how to tell him where I was.

Eventually, I saw other cars having the same problem, so I pulled up and after searching for some time I located the button to call for help. I don't know if the guy understood me or not, but I rambled on about the gate not working and it eventully was raised. Thank God! I was so happy to be out of there.

 I told Elly we were done for the day and we were just going to stop by the PX on the way home. After hearing me talk all morning about how I didn't know where the street or the doctor's office was and hearing me tell Sam I didn't know where we were at it's no surprise that the next thing Elly said was "Mama, do you know where the PX is?" I LOVE that girl! She gave me a good laugh after a very stressful morning.

Oh, and next time I'm taking Sam with me.